I Write Things Sometimes

we get introduced to the gender swap au stuff first in the August 2018 Reverse Fellows omake, but this page was included later in one of the Daydream Hours (for the life of me I can't find a source for it, probably a leak from an unreleased edition) and is really instructive to Ryoko Kui's approach to how sex and gender informs her characters and her designs.

like, look at everyone except Kabru. aside from some hairstyle changes and some robes changing length, everyone else is dressed basically exactly the same as before. and this makes sense, because we're told in the story and in the Daydream Hours that dungeon gear prioritizes comfort, function and readability above all else. There are some obvious cultural touches here and there (dwarf's propensity for fur and lighter armor styles, the floofy healer robes, the elf-mage look), but mostly it all lends itself to those three criteria above. Your shit has to be comfortable to move around and fight in, it has to keep the blood inside your body, and it has to clearly communicate your role to others (the later adventurer's bible has a note about how wearing healer robes without knowing the requisite healing spells is illegal on the island).

now look at Kabru. I know Kabru was raised by elves and elves seem to have an overriding cultural imperative for serving cunt, but like. girl. girl. the waist-high leather boots, cleavage down to here and no armor whatsoever, it's like she went out of her way to specifically violate each unspoken tenet of dungeon gear.

and i think she did, purposefully. but to understand why, we need to look at kabru, and also laios.

Kabru was always intended to be a foil for Laios. They're both cut from a lot of the same cloth, being melee fighters in mail who lead their respective parties, but the similarities end there. Whereas Laios is very very often flatfooted in social situations, Kabru is the picture of grace; whereas Laios probably received some basic combat training before deserting the army, Kabru is highly lethal and trained under a Canary from childhood; and of course, whereas Laios's special interest is in all things monsters, Kabru is hyperfixated on people and their social intricacies. He has the same kind of keen eye and wealth of knowledge that Laios has, just turned in the opposite direction. Because he correctly surmised that knowing where your friends and foes lie relative to you, what they think of you and others, can be just as much of a tool (and a weapon) as a dagger or a sword or a spell.

And this is expanded upon pretty plainly in their designs. Look at Laios. Between the cuirass and the mail hauberk he's most heavily protected his chest and vitals, and kinda winds up looking like a turtle; the cuirass specifically, with the exaggerated anti-dungeon rabbit gorget, was purchased because it was designed to protect against monsters. What we get is a picture of a fighter who places efficacy against monsters as the most important element of his armor, and it kinds winds up screwing him in the actual function department; like, how often do we see Laios getting killed or just straight up throwing himself into death and danger, relying on his teammates to bail them out of trouble? it's part of his strategy ofc, his faith in his party and his intuitive understanding that his body and health are just as much elements to be used as collateral in fights against monsters (who also instinctively understand this, any hunt is always a life-or-death situation), but it also reads as dangerously gung-ho and presumptive, a fact that many characters remark on throughout the story, and something that causes Kabru a great deal of consternation when he's considering the problem of Laios.

Then there's Kabru. Already, when compared to Laios, he looks much more well-armored. He's got the greaves and the poleyn, and while this particular drawing from the Adventurer's Bible doesn't include them, he also wears gauntlets with an exaggerated lower cannon which stretches up to protect his elbow. Taken alongside the leather cuirass and the mail hauberk, he looks way better protected than Laios. Like, he looks more like a man-at-arms or a mercenary, someone who knows what he's doing (and keenly, someone who considers other people to be his main enemy). He looks like the respectable leader of an up-and-coming party who have a solid chance at conquering the dungeon—which he is! And, i can spill ink about how this style of armor can probably help him in x, y and z ways during combat, distributing weight and lending him better protection against slashes and stabs and blah blah

but i think the most important element for Kabru isn't its function or defense against people or whatever: it's what it makes him appear like to other people. for Kabru, the assumptions other people make about him because of how he looks is the most important thing about his gear. that it makes him look competent but not foolhardy, approachable but not vulnerable, reasonable but not naive. With a sword strapped to his waist, he looks like he fights primarily with a sword, when in reality, he's probably comfortable using literally any kind of weapon to its maximum lethality. he understands that before he can spill any blood, the very first blade he can slip past the enemy's guard is in the assumptions they make about him. that he's a friendly, charming guy, a lady's man they've seen flirting with girls at the bar up on the island, a swordfighter who is honorable and kind and definitely won't immediately go for the jugular the second the opportunity presents itself.

Kabru has an intuitive understanding that his image and reputation are collateral that should be used whenever the chips are down. he understands that while his training lends itself to opportunistic hunter-killer shit, the easiest path forward is to wear the mask of the good guy dungeon adventurer, and only let it slip in moments where being as cutthroat as possible is advantageous. its another way he's a foil for Laios: they both think about the dungeon in very animal/monstrous ways (as a holistic ecosystem in which they themselves are a part of a greater whole), it's just that Kabru's animal of choice is the human animal (which does wind up with him getting the shaft by how often he gets party-wiped by the same monsters Laios's party is able to handle).

which brings us back finally to fem!Kabru.

why the fuck is she dressed like that? because fundamentally, she's still Kabru, and she still understands that people are assuming shit all day long. she correctly surmised that she can weaponize people's assumptions against them, but this also starts laying bare her understanding of human cultural conceptions of sex and gender. Ironically it also winds up revealing how much masc!Kabru has also thought about how his own gender plays into people's assumptions—it's not that i don't think Kabru isn't authentically a lady's man, but that he's keenly aware what acting the playboy does for his image; likewise, understanding that human culture isn't nearly as equitable across gendered lines as elf culture, that a cultural tradition exists that devalues the physical abilities of women in human societies, that aside from Rin and Falin we basically never see human women in the dungeon as adventurers, and that she has no inclinations or talent for magic, fem!Kabru probably figured out the following:

being raised and trained by insane Canary dilf Milsiril, she's probably the best melee fighter in the dungeon (against other humans)

but wearing armor like a man would mostly just have negative ramifications for her image and reputation among other humans; girls don't wear armor, duh (probably get in better with dwarf girls, but you get the idea)

however, because of her training, she probably doesn't even really need the armor; Canary armor is a lot like modern Kevlar, prioritizing ease of movement while maximizing protection, so Milsiril probably passed a lot of that same ethos onto Kabru. Wearing elf armor would also have negative ramifications for her image, for obvious reasons (elfs are fucking annoying)

so what does she do? lean really really really hard into "i'm just a girl teehee". Waist-high leather boots, floofy shirt with cleavage, gloves. that's it. she looks like a swashbuckler, or a rogue, but more than that she looks like a girl pretending to be a swashbuckler. prioritizing looks and fashion over function or protection or any other reasonable dungeon standards makes her look dumb, which is precisely the point.